Everything Must Go

 Emboldened by my recent dive into the junk drawer in our kitchen, I set out to create something we have only attempted once before since moving into this house: A yard sale. 

We have allowed us all a healthy run-up time of three weeks to prepare for the inevitable shock of "nobody wants this? I can't understand..." 

There coincidence that is the release of Toy Story 5 in theaters as we began this undertaking was felt in my bones as I dragged former treasures out from the shadows into the light. So many toys. So many beloved playthings. And I'm not just talking about my son's past. My own youth was on display even as I dug deeper into the recesses of what my wife has on occasion referred to as "our magic basement."

Items from a previous century marked the Denver Broncos' first Super Bowl win. Most notable in the souvenirs collected in this haze was the poseable action figure of John Elway. I have it on good authority that this is not a "doll" but rather a "collectible," and now that I have lived to see two more Super Bowls won by different players, I can probably let this one go.

Of course I do this with full knowledge that I will be doing this in the heart of Oakland, the one-time home of those silver and black maniacs and their fans, who still cling to their former team with a passion that rivals my own. Once John leaves my yard, I have no control over his future. I have to make peace with this. 

Which is just a tiny example of all the treasures that have gone too long without being noticed. It was important enough for me to buy a Walter White doll, excuse me, action figure back when Breaking Bad was front and center in my life. I will carry the memory of that experience even as I make whatever deal I make with some stranger who wants to sell it on eBay for an amount that would make my head spin. 

But it will be out of my house. It will be one less item that will need to be cataloged and discussed when it comes time for that roll calls me up yonder. Why did we hang on to not one but two video cameras so long after Martin Scorsese started shooting all his movies on his phone? I don't know. I also don't know if we can get anyone to pay us a couple dollars for holding onto said technology for more than a decade. 

Still plenty of time to sneak some of that stuff back into hiding for all eternity. 

Or not. 

What Do I Think?

 In many ways I will look back on my career as a teacher with a modicum of regret. Could I have done more? Did I always make the best choices? Couldn't I have retired earlier? 

That last one shows up as a result of reading the story about how Texas public school students will soon be required to study bible stories. The Republican dominated state board of education in the Lone Star State wants to include biblical verses and stories in the required literature curriculum. 

Admittedly, I have myself studied the Bible. I did this primarily in Sunday school when before my family put the lapse in Lapsed Methodist. I did so well that I earned my very own Young Readers edition of the Greatest Story Ever Told. And later, when I was in college, I took a course entitled, "The Bible As Literature." I get what all the fuss is about. There are a ton of great stories, many of them filled with sex and violence, found in The Good Book.

The approach being used in Texas, however, is likely to be the none-too-subtle approach used by the state when they required that all classrooms in the Texas public school system display the Ten Commandments. Never mind running in the hall, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife. 

Please understand that I am a fan of the teachings found in the bible. Like most of the New Testament with its forgiveness and conflict resolution. I also believe that there are a number of texts that can teach kids important lessons without quite so much dogma. Charlotte's Web comes to mind as a book that helped me sort out self-esteem and grief. I can assure you that I have struggled from time to time with the presentation of that story, not simply because of my own inability to get through the last chapter without weeping openly, but also because I teach a great many kids who are Muslim. Stories about pigs don't always go over the same for them as they do for their Christian classmates. Some things are best suited for a particular audience. Like maybe teachers who aren't big crybabies. 

So I guess that if the goal is to present a wide variety of ideals and thought, maybe this won't be so bad. I'm sure they'll be happy to present the humanism of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. right alongside those biblical texts. And yes, I can see an advantage to the teacher whose classroom management is supplemented by a heavy dose of judgement, but as I prepare to make this my last rodeo, I can't help but think.

That's it. I can't help but think.  

Renewal

 The philosopher George Carlin once suggested that one man's junk is another man's stuff. Specifically, your stuff is stuff while another person's stuff is junk. This makes it all the more interesting to me that every person I know has in their home what they will themselves refer to as "a junk drawer." 

There's lots of stuff in a junk drawer. 

A roll of tape. 

Batteries of various sizes and charges.

Bits of string. 

Tools living outside the relative convenience of a tool box. 

And so on. 

It is where useful things go to die. How about that spent tube of super glue? When it landed in the drawer it probably had one more application, but since super glue isn't your every day glue, it goes where all once useful things go: The Junk Drawer. 

That's just one of the things I found when I went on a mission to clean and reorganize our junk drawer. Mixed in with all those previously mentioned dead batteries and random nails and screws was that little vial of crusty chemicals that might once have been used to mend a broken plate or watch band. There were a few brand new watch batteries left on a package that once held half a dozen, with the immediacy of needing just that one every year or two left them buried under earthquake wax and cords for blinds that we got rid of decades ago. There was a padlock whose combination is now the stuff of legend. Perhaps those ancient numbers will reveal themselves to one of us in a dream about our junior high school locker. 

But not today. 

Today was the day that I ruthlessly tore into the notion that we might need this or that "someday." Today was the day that all of that wishful thinking went out the window, along with the shards of a broken protractor and a pair of dual phone jack splitters. 

Junk. 

I kept the stuff. You never know when you'll need that tiny solar powered calculator. 

Made Up Stuff

 Can you give me a brief account of the Teapot Dome Scandal? I won't trouble you for it right now, but about a year ago, I suggested that former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard had evidence connecting Barack Obama to this bit of malfiesence that took place more than one hundred years ago. It was until recently the other big presidential outrage in our history books aside from Watrgate. 

Oh. Right. History books. Those were bound volumes of writing collected to inform future generations about our past. These "books" were used to keep track of the stuff that we might otherwise have forgotten. Things like wars, slavery, more wars and genocide. After years of attempting to coalesce our experience as a nation, lately there has been a movement to ignore what took place in the past and focus instead on the made up virtues of the scoundrels of who made our country exactly what it is now: "Great."

But if there was going to be an account of the past decade for our sons and daughters to read as they try and piece together how we got to this place and who we can blame for the mess that we left them, I wonder how the Reflecting Pool Saga will unfold. If you were to believe the convicted felon who was elected to a second term after being impeached not once but twice, Barack Obama is to blame for the ugly condition of the pool which was supposed to be painted American Flag Blue to commemorate our country's two hundred fiftieth birthday. Instead there were vast chunks of blue sealant floating in a sea of bright green "water" infused with green algae that had replaced the blue-green algae after dumping hydrogen peroxide into the pool to get rid of the blue-green algae. 

That and the vandals that the convicted felon insists were out cutting seams in the coating put there only weeks before at the cost of fourteen million dollars to a company run by one of his Florida campaign donators. Confusing? Sure it is. Because it's all made up. Like the war in Iran. Or the immigration crisis. Or Somalian residents of Springfield eating the cats and dogs. All of which can be traced, he's certain, back to Barack Obama. 

I would not want the job of being a presidential scholar in the next decade. On the other hand, maybe it would be quite easy: just make stuff up. 

A Change Is Gonna Come

 Out of an abundance of curiosity, I decided to Google "Megamentary." What the brain trust of Al Gore's Internet was able to tell me was that a "megamentary" is a large scale documentary, in scope, subject matter or running time. If you were interested in Francis Ford Coppola's creative process during the making of his passion project, Megalopolis, you could watch Megadoc, to get a flavor for just how big things could get if you spent one hundred twenty million dollars of your own money to make a film that no one else wanted to see. 

Which is all well and good, except I was looking for some sort of clue about the new organizational plan for the Oakland Unified School District. Earlier this summer I attended a meeting with cohorts from all the other elementary schools across The Town to get a peek at what the coming school year had in store for us. In a word? Megamentary. 

This was the solution that the powers that be came up with after budgets were once again slashed and a whole passel of folks were let go. This is not uncommon in the education biz, but for a change this purge did not come at the expense of those in the classroom. After bending to the demands of the teachers' union this past spring, OUSD found themselves in a bind. They were honor bound to give teachers a raise, but the slack had to be taken up somewhere. 

Like that thick layer of middle management that had been a question mark for several years. Fifty-three elementary schools were divvied up into three groups, each overseen by a "Network Superintendent." Instead of fifty-some schools to watch over, each of these administrators had eighteen-ish. Each one of those schools had a principal, and often a vice principal or two. And over all of this layer sat a superintendent for the whole district. 

So, the word from on high was essentially to cut out the middle, and leave it to just one person to watch over all those disparate institutions, and that word became Megamentary. 

Now it makes sense, right? 

Except as of this writing, the district's web site still maintains a page for all those intermediaries. In a month and a half, we're all going to roll back into school with the same enthusiastic need for guidance that we have in previous years. On her way out, I asked our former Network Superintendent if Megamentary was an Autobot or a Decepticon. In a refreshingly candid answer, she suggested that it was more of a Voltron kind of thing, with smaller robots joining together to make one big robot. The day after that I learned that she had taken a job at another district as Superintendent, leaving me to wonder how we will all know how to join our various pieces together when the time comes. 

Megamentary. Sure sounds cool. I wonder how it will work. 

Interruption

 What if there was no cable TV?

I know. It sounds like a bad dream, but it happened to me. For real. 

There I was, minding my own business, enjoying the morning after my sixty-fourth birthday when I made the somewhat mindless gesture of turning on the television to keep me company while I got ready to continue my day. When I was greeted by a message on the screen that read, "This channel is unavailable. V58." A chill ran down my spine as I began to wrestle with the vision of hours of my summer vacation slipping away as I dealt with tech support issues. 

I have lived through these trials before. Many were the times I have spent dangling on a telephone line as someone from a distant locale attempted to unscramble the wires that bring my dopamine release system. Attempting to head this fate off at the pass, I restarted all the machines that are responsible for bringing video entertainment in to my home. There was a message on our Tivo screen that let us know that some elements would be eliminated soon from our service, and this made me fret that our tried and true TV digester was somehow the problem. I fought off the idea of a world without a digital video recorder. As much as I comprehend a future in which all video is on demand and storing things on a magnetic disc is so incredibly 1997 that I wrestled briefly with the thought of ditching this piece of hardware for good. 

Only briefly.

Because when I found that our Internet connection was still happy and viable, I checked for outages in my area that might be affecting my level of contentment. The customer service lines were no help, nor was the app that had so helpfully reminded me earlier that day about their gratitude for my regularly scheduled payment of far too much money to not have to think about what happens when I turned on my television. 

Historical perspective: I can remember having to tune in stations that came through the air like I was operating a shortwave radio. Rabbit ears enhanced with strips of tin foil are a part of my memories. I can remember being offered the option of watching upstairs on the black and white TV that could be rolled into the kitchen or downstairs on trays placed around the color set. I remember when stations would end their broadcast day and for several hours in the middle of the night there would be no television. 

No television? 

Please. I'm old. I can't take that kind of threat. 

By the time lunch was finished and I had begun making plans for the rest of the day without anything to watch, service had been restored. Reruns and news shows and movies and channels that I continue to pay for without ever looking at were once again tumbling into my living room. And bedroom. 

And into my full heart. 

What a ridiculous story. 

Roy G Biv

 It's Pride Month. June is when LGBTQ+ contributions to the world are celebrated. 

This makes a lot of people uncomfortable. This has always been the case since it started, with marketing folks figuring it's another opportunity to sell mattresses and T shirts. Baseball teams hold Pride Nights to show their continued support of the gay community in their area by putting rainbows on things like hats and jerseys that they were going to sell anyway, but these will show everyone who is not LGBTQ+ how comfortable you are wearing something that you might have worn anyway but this one happens to have a rainbow on it. 

Of course, if these jerseys or caps were given away free to players to wear during games that were held to celebrate Pride Month, there might be a few of these players who would object to being "forced" to wear something that so obviously goes against the grain of their personal beliefs. And manhood. Such was the case in, of all places, San Francisco where a group of players chose to scribble bible verses on their caps in order to protect them from the cooties that would no doubt seep into their skulls from wearing the rainbow-infused logo. After a stern warning from Major League Baseball, the players in question went back to their business which involves wearing a lot of tight pants and patting other players on the fanny. 

That's when the Department of "Justice" stepped in. The Second Trumpreich seems committed to ignoring the pedophile in charge while inserting themselves into any and all other potential miscarriages of "Justice." In this case, it seems that the DOJ is investigating a violation of players' religious rights for scribbling the bible verse on their caps. The verse in question is Genesis 9:12-16 which reads, 12 And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: 13 I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. 16 Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”

I am not a bible scholar, but I can read. To me, this verse suggests that all god's creatures, "every kind," are bound together by the sign of the rainbow. I don't think that the rainbow is mutually exclusive for Giants fans or young men who are so insecure about their masculinity that they can't wear an alternative logo on their baseball caps for one night lest they start showering together. 

Not that showering together makes one LGBTQ+. Of course, wearing a cap with a rainbow on it probably doesn't either. 

Steps

 Sometimes I think stepparents get a bad rap. I suppose we have those Grimm Brothers and Walt Disney to thank for that. 

Then again, I have seen plenty of examples where, as they were trying to find some port in the storm, newly separated people make terrible choices when it comes to finding a new life partner. What seemed like such a good idea when you were dating turns out to be a terrible plan when it comes to plugging it into a family dynamic. 

Especially when it comes to the kids. 

The new dad shows up hoping to fit right in, but without making any adjustments to his life. He just figures that if it were good enough for the courtship, it's going to be good enough for the long haul. If the new dad in question is an authoritarian and hopes that his word will be the law in his adopted household, things can get unpleasant very fast. 

For example. 

Like the first time the kid crosses new dad and the dad decides the only way to deal with the situation is to ground the kid. And take his allowance away. Which is a pretty nasty trick because as it turns out, the money that was supposed to be for the kid's allowance didn't come from new dad, it was from the money old dad had set aside. Now new dad is using that money to take his buddies out on the town, buying jet skis the kid will never ride. 

And so on. 

Okay, now I've set the stage I can tell you that I am creating a metaphor. I believe the former game show host currently occupying the White House that he has converted into his own private Dave and Busters is the "new dad." Whatever sweet nothings he may have whispered into America's ear during campaign season have all been tossed aside for the abusive relationship in which we now find ourselves. Our allowance is being spent on gold lions and American Flag blue sealant that peels off the bottom of the reflecting pool days after we spent millions of dollars to "fix it." 

Oh, and stepdad's a pedophile. 

Bargain Hunting

 Hey guys! Great news! I just won the lottery. 

Yes, you read that right. I will be paying the state of California three hundred billion dollars.

So, doesn't that seem ridiculous? 

Not if you're a convicted felon whose mental facualties are slipping as fast as his approval numbers. If you can explain to me how opening the Strait of Hormuz, which was open before we started blowing things up in Iran, is a selling point for this "deal," please feel free to explain. The memorandum of understanding details exactly how much each side is giving up, and though I notice a "promise" on Iran's part not to create any nuclear weapons, there is nothing in this document that A any kind of assuranc beyond a diplomatic pinky promise. Which, according to the "very stable genius" who signed our copy of the understanding is okay because, "If I don't like it, if they don't behave, we'll go right back to dropping bombs right smack in the middle of their head."

And doesn't that make the rest of this months-long distraction from the Epstein Files feel like it was worth it? Three hundred billion dollars could fully fund Universal Pre-K for all American children for about 15 years, construct thousands of miles of high-speed rail, or provide over nine hundred dollars for every single person in the United States. Or it could go back into the pot of money that we said we didn't have for USAID. For fifteen years. 

And so on. 

The war itself cost, in long term effects, one trillion dollars. So, I suppose in that case this "peace plan" is a win if it only costs us three hundred billion dollars. Which also seems like a bargain if you're a deranged orange psychopath trying to stay out of jail. 

Annual

 I don't want a cage match on my front lawn. 

Nor do I desire a parade. 

I used to tell anyone who would ask what I wanted or my birthday the same thing: Plastic toys. Mind you I began giving this answer after I had reached the age of eighteen. The flaw in this plan was that once I became a father, the stream of plastic toys was necessarily split between myself and my son. 

Lately, I have been the very happy recipient of Lego sets from none other than the lad with whom I used to have to share action figures. I feel very seen. 

Starting nearly a year ago, my lovely wife set out to discover just how dear it would be to rent a cottage on the Isle of Wight. This being a somewhat limited time offer since I will only be turning sixty-four this one time. Many thanks to John and Paul for putting the idea out there.

So, what do I want for my birthday? 

The comfort of my family. The closeness of friends. A place to put my head at night. Memories of all the plastic toys that my wife will dutifully point out are still someplace slowly decomposing and will surely outlast me and those memories. 

But I suppose the most realistic answer is actually the simplest one. What I want for my birthday is another one. 

Bad Reputation

 I am not what you might call a "joiner." I tend to assiduously follow the assertion made by Groucho Marx who said, "I would never be a member of a club that would have me as a member." Groucho made this case when he turned down a membership to the storied entertainers' group, The Friars Club. This did not keep him from attending the occasional party, especially the celebrity roasts held frequently by this showbiz consortium. 

I joined my high school marching band for essentially the same reason Groucho hung around the Friars Club: for the laughs. 

When I started playing tuba, it was with the intent of being part of its somewhat legendary offshoot, the Pep Band. This required that I be part of the marching band, since membership to the Pep Band was limited to those who played a brass or percussion instrument and were a part, in good standing, of that larger ensemble. Having charted my older brother's path on a similar trajectory I understood that there was a faction of that bigger group that existed, known at that time as "the band baddies." These were individuals who took up a position just outside the emotional center, known as "the band goodies." This worked well in my mind as the acronym "BG" made it easy back in the late seventies to create a distance between myself and anyone called Bee Gees. 

Showing up in early rehearsals with the same last name as my brother who served as drum major in his senior year but never bothered to cowtow to that inner circle, preferring instead to lead from a distance that kept him from joining what he rightly felt was a bit of a cult, with the band director at its center. I traced much of that same trajectory when it was my turn to put on the uniform and walk in step, always with the intent that this was my way of being in the Pep Band. 

I have written here on occasion about the experience of being in the "cool part" of a group that was not considered cool. There was a level of acceptance that I enjoyed by being part of that bigger group that allowed me to have that team feeling that others get from playing varsity sports. I gave my all to the paramilitary program that our band director was laying out, but I kept my distance from the sycophants who spent their free periods in the director's office. 

Instead I kept my distance, hanging out in the practice rooms down the hall. I realize now that this distance seemed like a safe one, but it only kept me mildly insulated. I can see that I was not the daring rebel that I presumed myself to be. I was there to play in a band. On occasion I marched in step with those next to me in straight lines, just for the chance to dress up in costume and play music much faster and louder than we might and for just a while, we weren't inside the lines. 

As noted previously, I didn't make it to the end of my senior year as pep band president. As it turns out, the faculty and staff of my high school had a pretty effective way of shutting me down. I wasn't really in charge. I just got to spread my band id around for a while until things got uncomfortable. In my later years I wonder if I couldn't have just gone along and stuck with the program. I don't mind when a Bee Gees song gets played in my presence anymore. I'm proud of the years I spent in band, in and out of line. 

I guess I wasn't that bad after all. 

Let Them Eat Pizza

 How about a billionaire with the inability to "read the room?" 

Sounds familiar, but in this version of the story it won't be the decrepit felon who hosted a celebrity fight club in front of dozens of paid subscribers.

This one goes out to Mark "The Zuck" Zuckerberg who had this fantastic idea to bring his employees together for an all-day "hackathon" to build team spirit at The Facebook after the dismissal of nearly one tenth of his company's workforce. What is a "hackathon?" It's an intensive collaborative event where programmers, designers and subject matter experts gather to build working software or hardware prototypes. The hopes for this marathon of innovation is that the group or company can create fresh new product to offer up to an excited public. Or in this case, an anxious and frustrated nerd of a boss. 

If this whole thing reads a little like an episode of The Office where self-proclaimed World's Best Boss Michael Scott requires attendance from his crew at a company picnic, then you're not far off. At Dunder Mifflin, the staff tends to roll their eyes at the boss and go along after realizing that these misadventures are a distraction from the otherwise dull grind of a work week. This is not the general feeling at Meta, formerly The Facebook. 

One Meta employee said, “I’m literally preoccupied with keeping the lights on for my team. I have no incentive to participate, let alone have the time to do so.” As if the phrase "Meta employee" weren't discouragement enough, these minions of Zuck were being asked to come in and work feverishly on new AI product that could quite possibly eliminate their own position, then you're starting to get the picture. 

Certainly in a culture spawned in feverish nerd gatherings like a hackathon, this might be a little confusing, but when the boss issues his command to code from behind the walls of his exclusive Hawaiian estate the "fun" of pizza and beer and pulling an all-nighter loses some of its spark, especially after eight thousand of your fellow employees were just laid off to "offset other expenses." 

Other expenses such as hiring a "beach water person" to oversee liquid-based activities at the Zuck Beach House. That and paying for all that pizza. 

Off

 "There's no such thing as bad publicity." - PT Barnum

"There's a sucker born every minute." -  PT Barnum

"The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about." - Oscar Wilde

You might be familiar with these quotes. They come to us from a time long before there was such a thing as social media, so you can imagine how difficult it was to go viral before the advent of telephones. Mister Wilde was an author and gadfly. Mister Barnum was, if you were to believe Hugh Jackman, the world's greatest showman. They lived their lives in the nineteenth century trying to make a name for themselves and, it would seem, they were successful. 

I bring them up here and now in the early part of the twenty-first century to remind us all that everything old can be new again. Or it can just be old again. Like the way the convicted felon continues to live rent-free not just in the ruins of the White House, but inside our brains. I have no doubt that among the various aphorisms and quotes this "very stable genius" has gilded on surfaces that he faces most every day are the words from Barnum and Wilde. 

Or perhaps this is giving him far too much credit. His capacity to retain information is limited to remembering which one is the giraffe. It is our own fault for letting the former game show into our homes in the first place. It is our own fault for believing that he had something to offer us. He is only here for himself. Each word that I write here is only a reminder to us of our willingness to slow down and watch the train wreck that has become our once great nation. Each day is a fresh reminder of just how many suckers have been born here in the United States over the past fifty years. 

This past Sunday I set out to ignore the gaudy spectacle being held on the front lawn of the White House. I tried not to imagine that this twice-impeached cult leader would some how manage to create a media event that would compliment his gladiatorial exhibition, like the long-awaited announcement of a peace settlement to the war that he had started himself to obscure all the other ugliness that thrives within the three ring circus that surrounds him. 

In the midst of all this ugliness, I have completely lost track of where the off switch is. 

Fractally Speaking

I have a deep and abiding respect for physics. You can see it in the title of this blog: Entropical Paradise. Not just a clever play on words, but a solid description of the world in which we live. Things continue to move from an ordered state to a less ordered state seemingly without fail. You could tell yourself that you're staying on top of chaos by sweeping up on a regular basis, but those dustpans full of debris have to go somewhere, and the bristles on your broom eventually wear down until you need to get a new one. And what do you do with the old one? 

More debris. 

There was a time when I was more of a fan of the world breaking down. I found myself rooting on the gradual breakdown of our place in the galaxy. I was amused by the idea that we might somehow slow the disintegration of our planet by conserving or taking care of the nice things we have. In the 1980s, hedonism seemed to have reached some sort of logical extreme, and the notion that the Berlin Wall came tumbling down for freedom was tempered by the need for free enterprise. It was the poet and philosopher Notorious BIG who suggested, "mo' money, mo' problems." Mo' anything means mo' problems. 

We knew about global warming. We knew about polluting the land, the sky, the water. America led the charge: Go big or go home! 

Except we were home. Which might explain all these vain efforts by billionaires to flee our third rock from the sun in hopes that we could find another rock to abuse for a few thousand years. 

Now that I am a parent with a sense of just how badly I have messed up the earth for my son to take it on the next leg of our tour of expiration, I feel bad about every plastic bag I wasted. I wish that I would have considered mortality more fully when it still seemed hypothetical. Like the fact that we are running out of helium. Humans consume it far faster than it can be made. When I think about all the balloons that I inhaled only to make my voice rise momentarily while that precious gas disappeared into space, it gives me pause. It makes all that terror of Mylar balloons seem a little ridiculous since soon there won't be anything to put inside of them.

And someday I expect that I will have a moment left to apologize to my grandchildren and their friends as they sit around their birthday table stacked high with Soylent Green wafers and decorated with worn out brooms. Sorry kids, I'm the reason you can't have nice things. 

Hidden From View

 I have it on very good authority that one cannot cause a pot of water to boil by staring at it. 

I re-learned this immtable fact, save for the stray Kryptonian wisegu.y who might beg to differ, by sitting in front of a screen for several hours last Friday night, watching a Livestream of a crew of workers assemble a scaffold. Along with several hundred thousand others, I started at my computer screen in hopes of seeing something more: The removal of the Orange Worst's name from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. 

Crowds began to arrive before noon on June 12 at the actual site where the defenestration of the MAGAt in chief was taking place. Onlookers were initially quiet, but as the deadline of midnight on the east coast approached, those who had committed to be there when the defacement of a national landmark was eradicated grew more unruly. The expectation that the court order that had mandated the handful of words to be physically stricken from the record approached and then passed. 

I sat at my desk as I watched the minutes tick by. A rainstorm blew through Washington DC, hampering the efforts of the workers for a spell, then they returned to their task. Surely but slowly. It became increasingly apparent that there was another force beside a court order and weather involved. There was this matter of waiting for the paperwork to be completely crossed and dotted with no room for last minute appeals. 

Shortly after midnight arrived, the crew began to drape their very impressive scaffold with an equally impressive white and blue tarp. Not American Flag Blue as some might have expected, but a screen to keep the crowd from seeing what was inevitably going to take place. 

It was at this point, approaching eleven o'clock in my neighborhood, that I took my leave of the situation. The schadenfreude I was hoping to experience would have to wait. The minor exultation I might have enjoyed would have to be of the more vicarious sort. The next morning, I reflected on the mild assurance that there are still limits to the authority of the Orange Worst. Even if those limits need to be shielded by a tarp. 

Proof

 As I sat in my seat enjoying the storytelling talents of Mister Steven Spielberg, I found myself once again struck by how many movies you can cram into one. Not unlike my experience watching Project Hail Mary back in March, I was struck by just how many hours I have spent in darkened movie theaters and in front of a television set staring at other people's notions about what lies out there in the vastness of space. 

There's a lot of it. Space, don't you know. 

It's been nearly thirty years since this same guy, Steven Spielberg, had me transfixed with a story of a visit from visitors outside our solar system. That was the first time that I considered the possibility that extraterrestrials might not be looking to vaporize us, or worse yet, to lecture us like Klaatu in The Day The Earth Stood Still. We had all just better wise up and start getting along or Gort would come back and vaporize the lot of us. Which is what those nasty aliens did on Independence Day, with little or no provocation. Maybe that was just pent up aggression left over from the first time they were able to catch reruns of the Lawrence Welk Show. You know, like when the space guys caught Hitler's first televised speech in Contact. Who'da guessed that the space guys were antifa? 

When I was much younger, I read local newspaper accounts of cattle mutilations, and the potential for them to be committed by little green men or great hulking purple monsters was never fully discounted by the reportage I could find. What would happen as soon as the otherworldly travelers got tired of their bovine experiments and decided to move on to more complex organisms? I had seen It Came From Outer Space by then and I had hope that whatever shape they came from that aliens were maybe just misunderstood, frightened and just trying to get home. 

Spielberg gave us one of those. ET just needed to phone home. And just like Roy Neary, the government wasn't going to let anyone here on Earth get in the way of us figuring out exactly what these voyagers were after. Were they here to enslave us? To make room for the galactic throughway? 

I confess that I tried to take in some of the recently released UFO files. I find it patently ridiculous to believe that "the truth is out there" when it's coming from the Trumpreich. Why not hand over the Epstein Files while you're at it? 

Someday, maybe Steven Spielberg will direct a movie about it. I'll believe it when I see it. 

Summer Reruns

 Flag day. This may or may not be Sheldon Cooper's favorite holiday. 

It just so happens to fall on the same day that some narcissistic twit celebrates his crawling out into the light. I hesitate to refer to this as a "birthday," but will entertain references to spawning or being disgorged in some way or another. I would like to rise above the need to wish this convicted felon anything but the most standard returns of the day. I have plenty of issues with what he is and the things he does and his capacity for making everything he touches turn to the sludge previously referenced from whence he crawled. A happy birthday would be a stretch, but I do hope that he is aware of just how much life goes on in spite and without him.

Flag day. Which causes me to wince remembering the image of this adjudicated rapist fondling the Stars and Stripes. Is his overt attraction to a piece of fabric a window into his soul? Every year on is birthday there were flags flying everywhere, all for the spoiled little prince. And certainly his ability to show interest or affection for other things and people is certainly suspect, so maybe this makes some sort of horrible sense. 

This summer will be full of celebration. World Cup. The Sesquicentennial of the United States. Prime Days. All of these events will no doubt be sullied by the continued existence of the man with the sludgy touch. The New York Knicks were on a thirteen game winning streak in the NBA playoffs. Then the Orange Worst decided to take a nap at Madison Square Garden during game three of the Finals and whaddya know? Knicks lose. 

How about last summer when he sat in the nearly empty grandstand watching squeaky tanks roll by while the rest of the country took to the streets to remind ourselves that we are a country without a king. 

So this year, he didn't bother to make any pretense. It's really all about him, mostly because that noise that you hear is not squeaking tanks this time but the wheels on his clown car coming off. Yes, sports fans, the winner of the one and only FIFA peace prize spent the weeks leading up to the World Cup bombing one of the competing nations. 

Change cannot happen fast enough for some of us. Because this summer will sadly still be all about him. 

I want our flag back. 

Summer Camp

 It is quite possible that what with all this fuss about war and inflation and the petulant slob inviting himself to basketball games to nap that you may have missed the continuing saga of ICE detention centers. 

You remember ICE, don't you? They are the ones who got their boss fired because they couldn't make the excuses for killing American citizens stick? The masked goons who terrorized the streets of Minneapolis, Portland, and Los Angeles over the past year, just to name a few of the municipalities that experienced the occupational force of the poorly trained posse of Stephen Miller's schock troops. 

Perhaps you thought that since they spent a couple months without being paid for that their mission had been blunted in some way. Maybe they got tired of abusing the rights of Americans and went back to playing Superman on TV or simply quit after their puppy-killing boss was let go.

Nope. 

They're still out there, trampling on the Constitution. A recently released report from theNo  Government Accountability Office outlined a myriad of problems and abuses found in the largest Camp East Montana, oddly located in Texas. Three detainees have died there in the past six months, and in one case the evidence regarding the death of a fifty-five year old Cuban migrant who was being held down by ICE goons went missing. Justice for Renee Good and Alex Pretti has been painfully slow, but at least there were witnesses and cell phone video to contradict the "official narratives" put out by the goons. 

Inside Camp East Montana, this kind of oversight has been tough to come by. Construction of the tent city was rushed by all accounts while contractors made millions without ever providing safe and sanitary facilities for the detainees. One such error in oversight had inmates filling out a written questionnaire to check for tuberculosis, rather than an actual medical test. This resulted in an outbreak because someone carrying the infection into the general population. No effort was made to accommodate those in wheelchairs in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, which I assume can only have happened because in the goons' accounting these were not Americans, wheelchairs or not.

So, you can rest assured that while the rest of the country continues to fall apart, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is doing everything they can to uphold the pathetic standard set by their convicted felon of a boss. 

Sleep tight, America.

What's News?

 A former reality TV villain running as a Republican is not news. The fact that this same "Republican" chose to run for mayor of one of the most predominantly Democratic strongholds in the country and did not win is not news. 

Additionally, another former reality TV villain who managed to get elected twice to the highest office in the land chose to show his face back in his former home town after making ugly noises as he fled for safer waters in south Florida got lustily booed by fans of his former home town's basketball franchise is not news. Nor is the fact that he fell asleep while "watching" the game that had been specially secured for him to find a seat while lifetime fans of that team had been shut out is not news. 

Here is some news: About a week ago after the party I hosted for the staff of my school, I noticed that the ice maker on our refrigerator had stopped working. As is my custom I went straight to YouTube to see if there was a troubleshooting video that would help me sort out this problem. 

There was.

This is not news.

I followed the directions carefully and fiddled with the control panel inside the door of my very fancy fridge. Lights blinked and beeps were heard, but I could not get the ice maker to start back up. Somehow I had managed to lock up the functions of my refrigerator to the point where nothing I did made any difference. I even went to far as to take the troubleshooter's suggestion of unplugging the appliance, waiting five minutes and then starting fresh. I tried this twice and got the same parade of lights with no change in function. At this point I surrendered. I scheduled an appointment with a technician to service my machine. 

This is not the news, but it does qualify as a revelation, of sorts. 

So I waited. 

A whole week. This is not the news, but it does give you a sense of how the tension built for me. In the meantime, our ice maker decided to start working again. The lights inside on the control panel: no change.

The night before the scheduled appointment, I did not sleep. I dreamed of all the ways that this could go wrong, from waiting for the tech in the middle of the street outside in the rain to discovering the expense of the replacement of that one sticky button. 

When the tech finally arrived, he apologized for making us wait until almost noon for him to show. I ushered him into the kitchen and introduced him to the refrigerator, along with a short dissertation on all the attempts I had made to revive it. He thanked me and opened the door where the control panel sat there, all lit up. 

I left hi to his work. 

Moments later, I heard the tech call, "You're not going to like this." I hastend back into the kitchen, fearing my dreams had come true. He pointed to the control panel. "All fixed," he announced. 

This is not the news, but we're getting there. 

I leaned in, surprised and embarrassed. "What did you do?"

He showed me the button combination that I was sure that I had tried a number of times before giving up. His magic touch had returned our appliance to normal function. 

I thanked him profusely. Now here comes the news: He didn't charge me. Normally a house call would run at least one hundred eighty dollars, but he didn't feel like he could do that to me. We agreed that if the company called that I could say that he talked me through the fix over the phone and there would be no charge. 

No charge.

That's the news. 

If this guy ever runs for office, he's got my vote. 

Putting Up Streamers

 I do remember the Bicentennial of the United States. I was old enough to enjoy all the red white and blue of it while maintaining a certain degree of cynical skepticism about it. 

Back in 1976, our country was still licking its collective wounds brought on by a war in Vietnam and the searing revelations of Watergate. We were limping toward what we assumed would be better days, but not without reservation. 

Still, there were lots of parties. Lots of ways to celebrate. There was a quiet understanding that we could argue with each other after the big barbecue, but the summer of 1976 was going to be a special one. 

Now, fifty years later, we find ourselves on the brink of another great celebration, but this one feels more like the kind where you get fifty percent off that mattress you've been looking at. Not the kind of feel-good experience where we can set aside our differences for a few days and take a look at all those crazy new quarters. 

The summer of 2026 finds us in the middle of a very unpopular war. The corruption in the White House is laid bare just about every single day, with hourly reminders of just how awful things have become since we last gathered together to look at all those crazy new quarters. The spectacle that might have been hosting the World Cup soccer extravaganza has been dulled by the stream of racist and xenophobic attempts to keep the world from coming and sharing their cup with us. The outdoor concert on the mall has been turned into your hateful uncle's vision of how such and experience "should be." 

This is no longer a celebration for the land of the brave and the home of the free. This has turned into an exercise in self satisfaction and self aggrandizement for one man. Who cares if no one else wants to see any of this? Who cares if no one can afford a plane ticket much less a tank of gas to travel across this great land of ours to take any of it in. 

We are stuck in the Orange Worst's vision of America with nearly constant reminders of just how far away we have drifted from the ideals we once held dear. Trapped like rats on a sinking ship, we can only hope that we can scare off all the billionaires who have stolen the American Dream and take back our country and run it like the good Democratic rats we know we can be. 

Who's Got The Button?

 Do as I say, not as I do. 

I can tell you as both a parent and a teacher how empty this guidance is. 

For me, this shows up most often as I find myself staring at my phone while I stroll across the playground. This behavior is verboten among my young charges, in spite of the fact that we live in a world where cellular devices are as prevalent as kickballs. They're everywhere.

But I am busy checking my emails and texts, making sure that all communication is going on as it should. These young people with cerebral cortexes that are still developing cannot begin to understand how important my phone is to me. Compared to theirs. 

Moments like these are the ones that make me reflect on our country's insistence that no other countries acquire atomic weapons. Certainly the world becomes exponentially more dangerous each time another nation becomes the proud owner of a nuclear device. 

But who are the real threats here? The fledgling territories who are seeking to protect themselves through the threat of having bombs that will destroy their enemies in a much larger capacity, or the one country that has used such weapons in war already. 

Twice. 

There was some wild talk a while back about limiting our own nuclear stockpile. That turned out to be mostly talk. The United States sits on an estimated five thousand nuclear warheads, some of them actively targeted while others lay in wait. Another group is scheduled to be dismantled. We have so many atomic bombs we hardly know what to do with them. 

Just don't let us catch any of those kids fiddling with plutonium or they'll be grounded. Or bombed back into the stone age. 

Which crazy authoritarian regime do you feel comfortable having their finger on the button? 

If You Build It, They Will Come

 When I was born, there was already a professional football team in the area for which I could root. I grew up rooting for the Denver Broncos because they were literally the only game in town. I lived through more than my share of ups and downs with this franchise. By the time they reached their first Super Bowl, I was seventeen years old. 

The Denver Broncos did not win that Super Bowl. Through the 1980s, they struggled to remain relevant and flirted with success, appearing in three more championship games before finally coming out on the winning end of things. 

By this point, I was no longer a resident of the Denver Metro Area. I had moved to Oakland, California where I wore my orange and blue with pride and a little bit of fear in the heart of Raiders Country. Just for good measure, the Denver Broncos went ahead and won a second Super Bowl the very next year. I felt pretty smug about having a hometown team with those credentials. 

If you've spent any time poking around here, you've probably heard this song before. Again and again. But what struck me this week was the news that the Chicago Bears were moving ahead with plans to relocate their team to Hammond, Indiana. For perspective's sake, the Chicago Football Bears were founded in September 1920. For more than one hundred years, "da Bears" have been a cornerstone of what we understand as the National Football League. Those first couple of years, they played their games in Decatur, Illinois, so they weren't exactly Chicago Bears. In 1922, they moved to Wrigley Field to play their home games on the same grass where their ursine baseball counterparts on the North Side played. 

That's where you would find them, most autumn Sundays since. Until they move to another state. 

I have a great deal of sympathy for fan bases that lose their sports teams to new locales. Oakland has a somewhat tragic track record of misplacing their football, basketball and baseball teams. The Raiders have left Oakland twice, once for Los Angeles, and once again for Las Vegas. There are still plenty of folks hanging on desperately to their silver and black gear with the notion that the team somehow owes them something. Or they owe the team something. 

Like loyalty? 

When the 2026-27 NFL season starts, the Chicago Bears will still be the Chicago Bears. The Denver Broncos will still the Denver Broncos. The San Francisco Forty-Niners play in Santa Clara. The Baltimore Colts now play in Indianapolis. The Cleveland Browns now play in Baltimore with a new mascot: The Ravens. St. Louis had the Cardinals but gave them up to Arizona. Then St. Louis had the Rams, but they gave them back to Los Angeles. Houston has their Texans, but they probably don't notice that the Tennessee Titans bear more than a passing resemblance to what used to be the Houston Oilers. 

There is no crying in baseball, according to the guy who used to sell hot dogs at Oakland A's games. But I'm guessing a few tears will be shed in Chicago. 

Palace Revolution

 Where are the Epstein Files?

Where is the peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia?

Where is the replacement for the Affordable Care Act?

Where is that cap on credit card interest rates?

Where are those tariff rebate checks?

Where is all that affordable housing?

Where is the reduction to the country's deficit? 

Instead of those things, we've been given a flurry of construction projects designed not to improve any of the infrastructure of this country, but to pad and glorify the boor who needs constant validation to prop up his fragile ego. We have another installment of war in the Middle East. We have the repeal of the Voting Rights Act. We have a real estate agent in charge of National Intelligence. 

Seventy-seven million Americans voted for a convicted felon to be their "president," to end the war in Ukraine in twenty-four hours and to Make America Great Again. They bought the red hats. They drank the Kool-Aid. Now they are waking up and discovering just like the Whos down in Whoville that no Christmas is coming. The Grinch has stolen Democracy, and even if they gather together hand in hand and sing along with Lee Greenwood at the top of their lungs, they aren't going to get what they were promised. 

Instead we get a daily dose of social media rants and threats. We get more footage of the former game show host falling asleep during his own meetings shortly before he wakes up long enough to berate a female reporter or two. 

We'll keep reading about those voters who cast their ballot for damaged goods in 2024 who now regret their decision, but that ship has sailed. If we want our Democracy back, we're going to have to take it back. 

Hey, think the time is right
For a palace revolution
'Cause where I live the game to play
Is compromise solution

The Mass Of Media

 I am being asked to boycott the Columbia Broadcasting System and all its various media tentacles. This would mean that I would no longer be availed the opportunity to take in the pithy left-wing observations of Jon Stewart and those nutty kids from South Park. This is a conundrum for me since these voices are fundamental to the ongoing fermentation of my own particular world view. 

What message would eliminating these viewing choices from my menu? 

I suppose I would be saying that I do not approve of the corporate maneuvers that brought CBS and its aforementioned tentacles to this decidedly right-leaning position in the world. The cancellation of Stephen Colbert's Late Show is perhaps the most visible signpost on this road to ruin. The powers that be signaled the elimination of a thirty-three year late night television institution as "purely financial," but since that decision was made fast on the heels of Mister Colbert pointing out that his new corporate nannies had paid what amounted to a "big fat bribe" of sixteen million dollars to the big fat Orange Worst so they would be allowed to go ahead with their big fat merger, maybe there was some triggering. 

My bedtime has become a pretty standard nine thirty on weeknights, with the very rare exceptions for Bruce Springsteen concerts. The idea that I would be watching any of these programs live is a pretty amusing stretch. This includes the NFL broadcasts of my favorite team which can often be found on CBS, which I tend not to stare at not because they come on past my bedtime but rather because of my own ridiculous superstitions about fan rays. 

So what would I be missing? 

The relative freedom I tend to enjoy with all that content out there. Larry and David Ellison, the new father and son behind the controls of the Paramount Skydance Corporation have quite a laundry list of an Empire: Nickelodeon, Showtime, Comedy Central, MTV, BET, and the aforementioned CBS. Oh, and then there's the soon-to-be-finalized merger with Warner Brothers which will have the still further antagonizing effect of putting John Oliver and his wilderness voice crying out from under this seemingly endless corporate umbrella. 

No Loony Toons? No Turner Classic Movies? Will CNN be put through the same right-wing meat grinder that CBS News and Sixty Minutes has been? It makes the mighty Disney-ABC-ESPN empire look quaint by comparison. 

In the interest of transparency, I should let you know that Blogger, the platform upon which I mount the daily rant, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Google and has been since before I set up shop here. Google owns FitBit and Nest and YouTube and maybe even the phone upon which you are reading this. They are the reason that you get all those clever suggestions for gifts and services that you don't even remembering searching for. They are one of the leading purveyors of AI. 

It's only a matter of time before you all will have to be boycotting me. 

Last Bell

 After a week with sporadic meetings and check-ins with school, I have reached the point in my career that my wife has observed is my "last summer vacation." 

This hits harder than I thought it might, considering I set this Wile E Coyote process of retirement in motion nearly two years ago, and I am still a year away from making it in any way official. There is a part of it that I recognize in that I have always started off June with a certain amount of anxiety. How can I possibly fit all the fun and relaxation that I need into two short months? The sound of a ticking clock is hard to ignore, and I wonder if I will ever fully silence it.

I am used to answering the bell. One of my jobs at school is to stand out on the playground on most recesses and remind kids that playtime is over and it's time to line up. In this way I am the de facto bell. Will I be able to find my own snooze button? 

At one of the meetings I attended over the past week, I had the opportunity to introduce myself to a few of my fellow educators. We were asked by the moderator to share our school site and years of experience in the classroom, and when it was my turn, I told my colleagues that I would be starting my thirtieth year. Lots of appreciation for that number, and even more when I mentioned that all of this educating had taken place at one site. "This makes me something of a unicorn in this district," I confided. 

Then one of them asked me, "How much longer will you keep going?"

When I answered, "One more year," the reaction I got was resigned acceptance.

"What will you do then?" inquired the five year veteran across from me.

Then there was that flinch. The one that I am now confronting more and more. What will I do? Moving up into the mountain vacation home is out of the question since I don't own a mountain vacation home. Spending more time with the grandkids is currently a hypothetical since the grandkids exist in the same plane as that mountain vacation home. 

The easiest thing to do would be to keep rolling. Stay at my school until they cart me out on a stretcher. This does not seem that appealing, especially against the backdrop of this past year when my friend and fifth grade teacher was unable to answer the bell coming back from Christmas. Not his choice, I assure you. 

I want to have a choice. I want some life left to live. 

Now I just have to figure out what that might be.  

Comfortable

 Let's start with an easy one: Just about any sandwich someone makes for you. 

That's comfort food. 

Another seemingly universal component of this corner of the world's diet is the plate of crackers and ginger ale brought to you when you were sick in bed by your mother. 

A great deal of the food I was served by my mother qualified as comfort food. I grew up in a household where mom spent an hour or two each day in the kitchen, preparing a meal for my father, my brothers and me. It was a casserole-based menu that kept us boys running to the kitchen most nights, and I wish now that I had paid more attention to the recipes that passed by in front of us. 

I know that they were written down. I remember the tin box that served as her guide. Filled with three by five cards penned with her cramped but impeccably neat handwriting, the exact details of which were known primarily to herself and the occasional family friend who wanted to swap meal ideas for their hungry brood. 

I have never eaten a bowl of cream of mushroom soup. Not all by itself, but I know that the magic my mother performed in the kitchen on a regular basis had me ingesting gallons of the stuff through combinations of chicken and tuna and noodles and rice that made us come back for more. 

Most nights.

There were those dinners that turned out to be favored by one of my brothers, and I would patiently wade through those because I could expect with a solid degree of certainty that tomorrow night would be one of my favorites. 

Add to this steady stream of dinners the very unique and simple pleasure of buttery cinnamon toast on the occasional chilly morning. And the cakes. And the cookies. The output from my mother's kitchen would have had you believe that she was chained to the stove all day every day, but she managed to find time to escape to the living room on regular occasions to play piano and read books and magazines like they were the fire stoking the furnace of her mind. 

And occasionally, she might run across a recipe. 

And her legend grew. 

She also made a pretty amazing tuna fish sandwich. 

Art Schmart

 One of dozens of things that I find oppressively annoying is that this is the Bozo who put his face and name on a book called The Art of the Deal. 

I will not recommend this tripe to you, but I do think it's telling to take a peek at a few of the quotes from inside: “I discovered, for the first time but not the last, that politicians don’t care too much what things cost. It’s not their money.”

How about, “good publicity is preferable to bad, but from a bottom-line perspective, bad publicity is sometimes better than no publicity at all. Controversy, in short, sells.”

Perhaps, “The point is that if you are a little different, or a little outrageous, or if you do things that are bold or controversial, the press is going to write about you.”

Or, “The worst of times often create the best opportunities to make good deals.”

Then there's, “I try to learn from the past, but I plan for the future by focusing exclusively on the present.”

So let's fast forward a few years, where all this business acumen will be brought to bear on the world stage, as the former game show host attempts to negotiate a settlement in the war he started in Iran. As things fell apart once again over the weekend, the dealmaker complained, “If they’re over, they’re over. If they’re not, you know, I think they took too much time. Frankly, I thought they started to get very boring.”

But what about, “Leverage: don’t make deals without it?"

Ladies and gentlemen, I submit that this sad individual would not know leverage if it fell on his head and pretended to be yet another hair treatment. And to all those Bozo fans out there who opined, "That's what we need: a guy who will run this country like a business." 

Remember the ugly disdain this adjudicated rapist had for John McCain? Well, to paraphrase the former game show host himself, I like dealmakers who don't go bankrupt. Or community organizers from Chicago. 

Building Resentment

 You'll forgive me if I feel like the removal of the convicted felon's name from the Kennedy Center from the Performing Arts is a pyrrhic victory. 

In the simplest terms, the outrage that accompanied this nominal usurpation of a national treasure left me tired and hopeless. I believed that this would be the new normal, with the former game show host marking his territory in the only way that he and stray dogs do. 

It would be nice to feel some of that zeal that we all felt when those Confederate statues started coming down a decade ago, but it's more complicated than that. Like when that statue of Saddam Hussein was lassoed and yanked to the ground back in 2003. It would have been such a relief to connect that moment to the notion of "Mission Accomplished." 

But we knew this was not the case. It would be another eight years of suffering and confusion before Americans were able to extricate ourselves from this misguided excursion into the Middle East. 

Scraping the letters off the Kennedy Center that were placed there in a fit of pique by the Orange Worst will not remove the stain that it will leave behind. If the Second Trumpreich were to end tomorrow, there will still be years of recovery and plastering over the holes he has driven into our country. 

He tore down one third of the White House, leaving a hole and caution tape with nothing more than a curious set of circumstances that allowed him to legitimize his party palace when crazy people somehow got close enough to take a shot at him. Did it ever occur to anyone that maybe those crazy people wouldn't be shooting at him if he wasn't tearing holed in our country? 

So here we go: A UFC cage match will be held on the lawn of what used to be The People's House, along with the gaudy arena and lighting rigs that appear so inappropriate on what used to be a symbol of dignity and decorum. If we're lucky, maybe another judge will be able to step into the fray and be able to keep the Arc de Trump from being foisted upon us, dwarfing the monuments to real presidents whose reflecting pools have become sitcom versions of arguing with contractors. 

At the same time, he's having his attack dogs at the "Department of Justice" go after the woman he raped. 

And who is paying for all of this mess? 

I'll give you a hint: It's not King Pyrrhus. 

It's you and me. Hand me the paint remover. 

I Confess

 Confession Time:

I don't really believe that they asked only five dentists about Trident gum. I never bothered to chew it because it felt like a conspiracy of gigantic proportions. 

Not all things go better with Coke. Pepsi, for instance, does not go better with Coke. 

Happily ever after is a death sentence. Who really wants that kind of life? 

All that fuss about Malcolm Gladwell made about ten thousand hours isn't really that big a deal once you realize that adds up to just over a year. 

I forgot to water the plants last week. 

I thought the phrase was "for all intensive purposes" until I was over thirty. 

I have eaten tuna past its expiration date. On more than one occasion. 

There aren't enough days in the week.

Donating blood makes me feel superior. 

I have never blown the roof right off of this joint. Not once.

The Rolling Stones kind of creep me out. 

"Having it your way" at Burger King just feels like a lot of pressure to me. 

Don't wanna be an American Idiot. 

My sense of balance does not extend to my diet. 

If given a choice, I think I would prefer disorganized sports. 

I would be more likely to obey Stop signs if they asked nicely. 

The Big Bill

 Suppose you gave a party and nobody came?

The celebration being promoted by the convicted felon seems to be going the way of his big Birthday Parade from a year ago. Empty seats and squeaky tanks were the highlight of that particular escapade. The price tag on all this military hardware on display for the amusement of the Orange Worst cost was an estimated forty-five million dollars. 

Now, a year has passed, and the big deal we were all told about was the Great American State Fair, featuring performances by (checks notes) Morris Day, Young MC. Milli Vanilli, The Commodores, Martina McBride, and Bret Michaels. 

Oops. Pardon me. I'm just being told that this list is the performers who have, in some cases, politely declined the invitation from the adjudicated rapist's Freedom 250 cabal. Some not so politely. Which pretty much leaves MAGAt stalwart and music thief Vanilla Ice. 

Get your ticket now! I can assure you that operators are not standing by. 

Instead, stay at home and savor the irony of a concert promoted by the former game show host being connected in any way to the concept of Freedom. 

Or perhaps, as you look forward to the back yard picnic that you might possibly afford for your family this summer, you can be galled by the fact that Don "Junior" had his wedding paid for not by him or his mobster daddy, but by the local billionaires in Bermuda who are "very fond" of the second in a series of wives for little Donnie. It was a "charity" event. Like those celebrities who never have to pay for a meal even though they could buy the restaurant. These are not the folks who need free meals. 

Instead, we're sentenced to another summer of waiting for bad news to find its way to us as we look back fondly on the days when forty-five million dollars seemed like a lot of money. 

If the ballroom ever does get finished, I expect Vanilla Ice will set up a residency there. 

Get your tickets now!

Promotional Material

 "Are you gonna miss me?"

This was the question I was asked by a good number of rising middle schoolers. Not just this year, but it seems that this is a test that I always hope to pass. 

Invariably, I say much the same thing: "Of course."

Because this is the core of truth. Will I miss many of the group-inspired hijinks and behaviors that caused me undue stress and discomfort over the course of the one hundred eighty days of their fifth grade campaign?

Of course not. 

But I am clever enough to understand after all these trips to the cafeteria to watch the promotion of our "big kids" to the next level. 

Where they will once again be the "little kids." 

I do what I can to soften the reality into which they will be thrust. Middle school in any of its varied forms can be a harsh landing spot. Urban Oakland may be at the tip of that spear. 

"Are you gonna miss me?"

Well, I'm expecting given my somewhat lengthy experience in these climes that you are the one who will be missing me. The quantum difference between a once-weekly game-infused PE class with yours truly compared with your standard middle school Phys Ed class that meets daily requiring a change of clothes has not been fully revealed to these scholars. 

A media arts curriculum that allows them essentially six years to become accustomed to what a fifty minute period with transitions feels like will become their norm. The comforting scaffold of one teacher all day long will be removed. Showing up on time becomes the coin of the realm. 

Yes. I will miss them. All of them. After spending six years with most of them, I have become familiar with their good and bad days. I know what makes them smile. I know what makes them grumpy. I know there is another group right behind them with their own tastes and foibles. 

I look forward to that first minimum day next year when the new sixth graders will parade past their old school, and I can hear all about the next leg of their journey. 

I will miss them. 

Cha-Ching

 Out of many, one. 

E pluribus unum. 

That's the Latin you get to learn if you're a kid like me growing up in the sixties. It was the suggestion of Pierre Eugene du Simitiere, patriot and artistic consultant, that this become the newly United States' motto to the Founding Fathers in 1776. For one hundred seventy years, this worked out just fine, reminding us all that the castoffs and mutts from across the globe landed here to steal the Native Americans' land. It should be noted for accuracy's sake that this phrase seems to have an origin in the Roman poet Virgil's recipe for pesto. 

It wasn't until 1956 that President and steward of the Interstate Highway system that covers this great land of ours decided to make "In God We Trust" as the country's official motto. This was to draw a distinction between the U.S. and the godless Bolsheviks in the Soviet Union. 

Well, in hopes of making America great again, the U.S. Mint is going to pound out a whole bunch of sesquicentennial quarters featuring both mottos. For now we'll just revel in the specialness of our aging republic and ignore the fact that twenty-five cents isn't what it used to be in form or function. This one, besides having lots of mottos, will feature the visage of Thomas Jefferson. Which seems mildly appropriate considering he wrote the Declaration of Independence without Chat GPT. And if you're searching the change in your pocket to see who Tom replaced, I'll tell you that it has been George Washington since 1932. Since 1999, the flipside eagle has been replaced by commemorations to states and various natural wonders. Add to this the Mayflower quarter that features two pilgrims embracing and coming to a sidewalk soon in your area is the Gettysburg Address quarter featuring none other than Honest Abe after he had been so ingloriously cancelled from being the face of the penny. 

And speaking of pennies, just when you thought they were gone forever, the Mint will be pressing a bunch of Sesquicentennial coins worth an ever-diminishing value of one cent. Which reminds me: I have a bunch of bicentennial quarters I saved for fifty years. Any idea how much each one is worth now?

If you guessed twenty-five cents, you'd be correct.  

Questions

 Questions about the "president's" health persist. 

He's almost eighty years old. 

He's prone to fits of paranoid rambling.

He falls asleep during meetings in his own office.

His hands and ankles appear as though something is trying to claw its way out from the inside. 

He does not exercise. 

He eats McDonalds.

Did I mention that this guy is almost eighty? 

Oh, and should I mention the fact that he is currently assigned one of the most high stress jobs imaginable? 

And people seem to have taken up shooting at him as a hobby.

He's almost eighty years old. 

Yes. Questions about this subject's health persist. 

On Memorial Day, he spent six minutes "transfixed" by one of the columns in front of the White House after he got out of his limousine. 

But he can distinguish a squirrel from an elephant. 

Just in case that comes up. 

Feeding Frenzy

 I spent the long holiday weekend as I have on many occasions: feeding the cat. 

There was some concern raised recently about the relative health of the feline member of our family. To be clear, we got him from the scratch and dent sale in our neighborhood. All those other kind souls had gathered funds to pay for this infamous area stray to have all his teeth removed. Seeing an opportunity, my wife leapt at the chance to be the place where Fluffy would convalesce. 

Most of you know the story from there: How this wandering tom came to live in our home and hearts as our "forever cat." Or at least our "for the foreseeable future cat." 

Having arrived on our doorstep with a few thousand miles already on his kitty odometer, we have puzzled from time to time coming up with any sort of verifiable age for Mister Fluff. My suggestion of cutting him in half and counting his rings was dismissed as "horrible" and "insensitive." A point of clarification here: these remarks were made one morning after a particularly busy night of our cat stomping around our bed, demanding late-night attention, which makes sense since his kind are naturally nocturnal. Much in the same way that I am naturally cruel and sarcastic. 

There was not much on my Memorial Day agenda, save for the regularly scheduled runs and sitting down in front of a computer to compose another in a series of hysterical and insightful blogposts. With the school year winding down, there wasn't much in the way of lesson planning or classroom prep. This meant I had no solid excuse for ignoring the needs of my not-so-feral friend. 

Approximately every three hours, he would rise from whatever piece of furniture upon which he was ensconced, and wander about the house, yowling to let me know that it had been just about enough time since his last feeding and that if his bowl sat empty for another few minutes there would be 

Trouble. 

So that's how I spent my holiday weekend: being at the beck and call of a creature who by design turns up his nose at every third bowl of whatever I put in front of him and by circumstance has no teeth to do much about it. 

Boy, am I looking forward to summer vacation!

Victims

 I took the bait. I read with some prurient interest the story of an elderly California couple that ended in an apparent murder/suicide. Authorities believe that a months-long association with a Tom Selleck impersonator who bilked Karen and Donald Whitaker out of tens of thousands of dollars. Karen was convinced by one or more individuals who said they were Mister Selleck that she would be helping out the star's manager whose wife had recently passed away, leaving him destitute. Exactly how this became Karen's responsibility and not "Tom's" is a good question, probably answered best by the revelation that Karen suffered from early-stage dementia. 

For his part, Donald intervened along with the couple's adult children, eventually going so far as to cut up Karen's credit cards, but she went on to ask other family and friends to help in her mission of misguided mercy. The strain this put on the Whitaker's marriage ultimately proved to be too much, and on May 15 a welfare check at the couple's residence revealed their bodies. 

Karen's initial contributions began around eighty dollars, but soon grew into the thousands. In spite of numerous attempts to limit Karen's access to funds, she kept finding ways to send ever larger amounts of money. Donald confessed to friends that he had considered taking his own life, but didn't want to leave Karen alone and even more vulnerable. Donald was eighty. Karen was seventy-nine. 

Roughly the same age as the guy currently residing in the ruins of the White House. 

I don't think it's too big a stretch to suggest that some foreign actor with access to humiliating and/or incriminating evidence connecting the convicted felon to any number of embarrassing acts or incidents could be manipulating the feeble-minded former game show host. Unable to make the payments to his blackmailers through Target gift cards, the twice-impeached former slum lord decided to run for president again in order to keep the truth about his sordid life from making headlines. Need cash quick? Just have the Department of "Justice" put together a two billion dollar slush fund. Don't worry about Congress. They'll let you start a war without valid ID. 

I would say, "Poor Melania," but I think she's getting a cut from this whole scam. How else to explain that documentary? 

Suckage

 Did she jump or was she pushed? 

This past week, Tulsi Gabbard gave up her seat in the clown car as she resigned from the former game show host's cabinet. The former Director of National Intelligence can now spend more time perfecting her Capoeira technique. 

And trying to figure out where she went wrong. 

Some might point to the moment when the convicted felon was furiously planning an invasion of Venezuela and Tulsi was busy posting photos of herself on a beach in Hawaii. She really should have known that in this administration the only approved conspicuous waste of time allowed is golf. 

Or maybe it was when she insisted that Iran was not trying to create a nuclear weapon in spite of her boss' insistence otherwise. 

Perhaps she never got fully comfortable being a "recovering Democrat" in a cage full of MAGA chimps. She called her former party an "elitist cabal of warmongers."

What about that time that she got caught lurking around the FBI raid on Fulton County's ballots from 2020? 

She says that she will be leaving her post at the end of June to support her husband who is battling bone cancer. 

I think the most likely reason is that distinct lack of a Y chromosome. The four departures from the Orange Worst's cabinet during this Second Trumpreich have all been women. For those of you keeping score at home, you've got your Bondi, Noem, Chavez-DeRemer, and now Gabbard. 

And you're just going to have to believe me when I tell you that the boys in that band are every bit as bad at their jobs as the girls. They just happen to have the Bro Code working in their favor. Why none of these morons have been let go only goes to show how precisely bad off we are in terms of a leadhership vacuum. 

To wit: it sucks. 

Memorials

 Memorials are found in Washington D.C;

They are also found on sections of our Interstate Highway system. 

Or in front of libraries. 

On benches. 

Or scrawled in spray paint on the wall of a neighborhood store. 

People die every day. Lots of them. But not all of them get a memorial, save for the moment of silence afforded some at the beginning of a sporting event. 

My mother in law likes to share her feelings about such rituals when the topic comes up, suggesting that all those monuments and kind words are often wasted on those to whom they would matter the most. 

I want to believe now that I spent a good deal of my time with my parents sharing how much they mattered to me while they were alive. I believe it was our practice to end all of our conversations with "I love you," as a way to ward off the inevitable. The fact that this has been passed along to the interactions my wife and I have with our son is not lost on me. I hope to limit the chances of feeling like the last time we talked didn't include that reminder. 

The idea that people in our lives might drift away without an appreciation for all that they have done and meant to us infuriates me. I'm big into completion. And summing up. And tying up loose ends. 

And building memorials. 

My father has a rock next to the creek that runs behind the high school that we all attended. That creek is near the bottom of a watershed that begins high up in the hills above Boulder where the trickle of a stream where I sprinkled the ashes of my father so many years ago. There is a blue spruce tree that still stands in the back yard of my childhood home. It was brought down the mountainside by my mother and I, much to the bemusement of the rest of our family as a tiny sapling. These markers remind us of where we came from, and give us a place to rest our memories. 

Which reminds me of a song by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band that my older brother likes to quote: "Gravestones cheer the living, dear, they're no use to the dead."

I suppose I truly hope that I am the monument to my parents. Along with my brothers and our families, we continue to point in the direction on which we were set by them. 

Renovation

 An "American Flag Blue" coat of paint on the bottom of the reflecting pool between the Lincoln and Washington Monuments. 

A helipad on the South Lawn of the White House, or rather what is left of the White House, apparently the new models of Marine One have downward facing exhaust and could scorch the grass. Currently, the older models are being used to ferry the Orange Worst to the nearest Air Force base where he can be shoveled into the cargo bay of Air Force One. 

The helipad stands in contrast to most of the other wild hairs that the convicted felon seems to obsess on daily. 

Paving over the what-was-once-a-rose-garden seems to be another such project.

Or gilding every available vertical surface with which the former game show host might come in contact.

How about the two hundred fifty foot "Victory Arch" that Jeffrey Epstein's pen pal wants to erect near the Arlington National Cemetery, featuring gilded ornamentation, four lion statues, a winged figure crowning the top and the inscription “One Nation Under God” emblazoned across its facade. If plans go ahead as scheduled, this monstrosity will loom nearly one hundred feet taller than the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. 

Because bigger is always better. No matter what Stormy Daniels would tell you. 

Which brings us to the ballroom. The focus of all his faux-highness' attention while he ignores the peasants rioting in the streets. Just like Paris. Only bigger. 

I am referring to the unrest. 

And the ridiculous ballroom which seems to be a product of a childhood spent with a large golden spoon shoved in his mouth. Suddenly, even some Republicans are starting to question the adjudicated rapist's priorities. He says himself that he does not think about American's financial situation, "Not even a little bit." Why should he? Up until now, he barks and the rest of the clown car leaps into action, sparing no expense. Joe Biden loves golf. It cost taxpayers nearly eleven million dollars over the course of his administration to keep him on the links. The Orange Worst has frittered away more than thirty million dollars in the first year and a half of the Second Trumpreich. 

He should be thrown in jail not just on principle, but as a money-saving alternative to the HGTV plague he has visited upon us all.